“All right.” It wasn’t all right though. My face hurt a whole friggin' lot and my heart was going to burst out of my chest from how scared I still was. But Slim's observation got to me. "They were Croatian?"
He nodded wearily. "I recognized the tattoo on their hands. I had an old customer that had me cover up that gang symbol a while back."
Jesus. This was a friggin' nightmare.
And this was exactly what Sonny had said he didn't want to know—who our father owed money to besides the Reapers.
The moment we crossed the second block over to get to Mayhem, three men were already waiting for us outside. One was the guy a little older than Dex that was really attractive, and the other two I’d never seen before. One of the guys went directly for Blake, only casting me a sidelong look before he pulled bloody Blake inside the building.
“Oh, fuck,” the good-looking man named Wheels muttered when he stopped right in front of me. His eyes went on a search. “They did this?”
Slim had the grace to repeat what the men had told me in a voice much more balanced than mine could have been at that moment.
Wheels groaned in response, shaking his head. “I’m so sorry, doll.”
I was too. “It’s all right. It could’ve been worse,” I tried to tell him but my voice was wobbly and unpaved. Weak, weak, weak. I was fine. Totally fine. I needed to get myself together when Blake was bleeding all over the place and I ran the risk of peeing my pants in fear. When I lowered my eyes to the ground, I caught a flat black piece of metal tucked into the waistband of Wheels's jeans.
A gun. Holy shit. He had a gun. Why was I even surprised?
“Let’s get you some ice,” he somehow managed to suggest through gritted teeth.
The three of us headed up the stairs while Blake had gone off with the other men toward the kitchen on the first floor. Wheels and Slim seemed to be having a telepathic conversation over my head. I didn’t have it in me to care enough to pay attention to what was being communicated. The throbbing of my face multiplied tenfold with any muscle twitch.
With a Ziplock bag pressed to my cheek and a bottle of water between my thighs on the couch, Wheels planted himself next to me with Slim on my other side. None of us said anything. What was there to say? Wheels didn’t ask what happened or ask if I was okay. He simply sat there breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth.
“Is Blake okay?” I finally asked after grabbing another wad of paper towels to cover the bag of ice.
“Jesse’ll be stitching him up now. He’s fine,” Wheels answered.
I sucked in a ragged breath, looking around the dimly lit room with its pool tables and bar. This mess was eating at me little by little. They didn’t want to get cops involved. My dad owed those assholes enough money that they drove all the way to Austin to make a point, and I'd gotten dragged into the middle of a mess by a man that didn't love me. And they’d just held a gun to my friggin’ face after hurting Blake. It was one thing to deal with Liam but a completely different one to get held up by gangsters.
Gangsters. Jesus. Two months ago my biggest worries had been paying my cell phone bill.
“Is this normal?” I asked the man weakly.
Wheels glanced at me out of the corner of his eyes, sighing. “It ain't totally uncommon.”
I didn’t know how I felt about his answer.
"Do you think they'll come back if they aren't paid?”
The door burst open, cracking against the wall in a loud pop of cracked sheetrock that signaled Dex's arrival. His tall, fit outline filled the doorframe. He scanned the room before landing on the three of us huddled together.
And I felt it. Everyone felt it.
The snap of his mood plummeting was like a blanketing sheet of ice—it might have even been hell freezing over from how chilling and powerful his anger was. It signified the coming of the second Ice Age. Then his eyes narrowed in on the Ziplock bag I had pressed to my cheek. And if possible, the taut line of control in the air pulled to the point of unraveling strand by strand.
In the span of two seconds, Dex had stormed over and dropped to his knees in front of me, one hand burying itself in my hair, the other one planted on the couch cushion just to the side of my thigh.
“Iris.” His tone was wild and low.
I blinked at him. “It’s okay.”
The hand on the couch moved up to pluck the ice pack from my grasp. Dex’s face shuttered down. Something indescribable flickered in his bright blue eyes, something that was related to fury and a distant cousin to murder.
That added in with his tone, scared me. “Tell me.”
“Those guys came in and hurt Blake. Then they told me that if my dad doesn't pay them back by tomorrow they’ll return.” And finish the job, whatever the job was—me dying or something equally brutal. Not that I would ever say that to him.
Dex’s head dipped toward mine, his eyes not losing an ounce of that dark emotion that swam behind them. “What did they do?” he asked me in a whisper.
I was torn between giving him a shortened version and the truth. I figured both would somehow blow up in my face. The expression I must have made was a sign to Dex that I wasn’t telling him something because his hand reached up to trace my jaw, his eyes locked on what I could imagine was the swelling red mark on my cheek.
I didn’t want to worry him, but I knew if I didn’t tell him what happened, he’d be more pissed about it later.
“He grabbed my hair when I was on the chair and he yanked me off of it,” I told him honestly. I could see by his bulging Adam's apple that he swallowed hard. “Then he slapped me.” I sucked in a breath, letting that wild fear creep over my shoulders. He pressed a gun to my face, I wanted to tell him but I couldn't convince myself to say the words out loud.
Dex’s mood shot through the room like a live current. His face hardened, his posture stiffened, and I swear he even stopped breathing. Molecules in the air paused in deference to him.
But instead of saying or doing anything, he dipped his mouth to mine in a press of a gentle kiss. A lingering kiss that made me forget my head hurt because it made everything else feel better.
“I’ll get one of the guys to bring you some Advil,” Dex whispered, kissing my jaw with a tenderness he so rarely possessed.
It was right then that I noticed his hand was shaking—trembling. He kissed me once more right next to my eye, careful not to hurt me.
Dex took his time getting to his feet, his movement was steady and level but there was something off about him.
"Where are you going?" I asked, scanning his face. That look in his eyes wasn't right. It was savage and unruly, and it made my heart clench even harder.
"I'm gonna go take care of this," he said, eyes flashing up to the ceiling.
Oh crap. Panic nudged at me. Worry over what in the world this man was going to do if he left. In that split second, I couldn't have cared any less about what happened back at the parlor. Not if Dex was going to go do something stupid. "Charlie."
"Babe," he growled. "I need you to feel better. Sit down."
I reached out and grabbed his hand, threading my fingers through his in a tight squeeze. "Don't do anything." I tugged on his hand. "It's fine. I'm fine. Really. I'll figure something out so that they can't find me."
"You're not goin' anywhere." It was stated. Demanded. His Adam's apple bobbed with hard swallows, his muscles tightened and loosened twice.
"Dex, please," I begged him. "Please. If you get in trouble with the cops again..." A sob was lodged deep in my chest. "Don't go." My heart was going to shatter. It was getting julienned by what-ifs.